Creating Your Leadership Brand by Libby Gill

Having a brand is less complicated then it is thought of. Its simply your image/reputation: Its what people say about you when you leave the room and its up to you to manage and control your brand. It’s the promise you make and fulfill that which makes you a long term successful brand.

3 Key to successful brand:

Define your value
What is it that I uniquely bring to the table? You bring something that no one else brings.To define your value you need to ask yourself few basic questions:

What is the value I bring?

What are my skills or strengths

What are my passions

What does the workplace wants from me?

Refine your messageYour message needs to be refined. The message you put to the outside world.
How you define, articulate and position your brand and yourself within the marketplace. You need to think about the ways that elevate you from your competitors. Everything you do is creating a story, you get to be the one that tells that story and you need to compile a message that is meaningful so your customers do not have any questions un-left about who you are and what you do.

For example you are a company XYZ (Your name) providing services of designing a website, your client ABC (your core client) who wants you to develop, learn and create a website (outcome) for them.

Your message/brand story needs to be very refined, very specific for people to understand. Once you are able to define your message to people, they have a clear purpose of why to hire you.

Deliver your promise consistentlyIts all about deliverance once you have defined your values and refined your message you need to have a compelling story so that people listen to your message.

The 3 V’s of Executive Presence:

In the west and other parts of the world, now when we are in digitally connected world that having a sense of presence can be really important. To have sense of executive presence is really about understanding who you are and how to articulate your brand message and how you communicate your brand story when you meet people in visual. This comes from the animal kingdom we make decision about how we feel and how we want to interact in the very short span of first 5-10miutes of when we meet people.

Visual CluesWe pick feelings about someone from visually looking at that person. Either we get a sense of warmth or a sense of competence when we meet someone. This we determine by having clues form visually looking at that person, his/her facial expressions, mannerism, hand gestures, gestures matching up with words, etc.

Vocal EnergyOur voice tells a lot about us. Deep voice is mostly considered as authoritative. Having some energy and color in your voice keeps your listeners interested. The speed and rhythm depending on the message you are trying to convey is very important to keep your customers engaged.

VERITAS havingIt’s of high significance. Its about having a powerful and truthful message which can influence people and their decisions about you.

Once you have created your brand statement you have already created that sense of expectations for your investors, customers, or any relevant stakeholder and then you need to consistently deliver that promise.